1993, Borik Press (Raleigh, NC) . . . computer music . . . duration: 7:30
Three excerpts:
Category: computer music/multimedia
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PENINSULA
1984 . . . piano and recorded computer music . . . duration: 8:30 . . . . . . . . . . published by Borik Press (NC)
Glacially-etched shorelines inspired sonic imagery for a series of pieces culminating in PENINSULA. Mappings of the natural contours of the Leelanau Peninsula provided richly varied patterns as basic coordinate numbers for sculpting sound patterns. The piano explores some of the endless possibilities for articulating a spectrum of sonorities. A surrounding environment of synthetic sounds was made by digitally analyzing timbral qualities of acoustic instruments, mostly with percussive articulations (metaphorically the rocky shore). The timbres were modified and resynthesized into a pointillistic sound texture. The density of the sound events rises and falls in waves according to changing values derived from the basic mappings. Larger confluences of waves are located in time by map points of special significance on the graph.
The coexistence of piano sonorities and synthetic sounds is a metaphorical meeting of seascape and landscape, both animated in time.
performance by Clifton Matthews, Winston-Salem NC, February 2007 -
Angels of Bright Splendor
2013 . . . . computer music, optional solo treble instrument . . . . duration: 7 minutes
In Zuni origin mythology, according to Wikipedia, thunder sounded, and all The People climbed from darkness, emerging into the daylight world. Seeing the Sun (Awonawilona) and not used to such intense light, they cried. Where their tears fell, sunflowers sprang from the earth.
Angels of Bright Splendor is the second in a series of pieces about angels that began with The Fourth Angel, computer music also with optional instruments, portraying an image from the Biblical book, Revelation. The seven angels in chapter 16 inflict suffering upon humanity: “The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire.”
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Nightscape
2021 . . . . digital sound sculpture . . . . 16 minutes
Abridged 9-minute version:
Back in the 1970s and ’80s, I explored images suggested by nocturnal titles (Night Songs, Dark Haven, Somniloquy) and landscape titles (Animated Landscape, Dreamscape, Icescape). Rather than depicting events in narrative form, Nightscape builds a quiet nocturnal soundscape of gentle shadows, silhouettes, and points of light, inviting simple observational or meditative listening.
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By the Shining Water
2021 . . . . sound sculpture . . . . duration: 7:30
I have often gazed at beautiful bodies of water, especially Lake Michigan and, more recently, the river Vltava in Prague. This sonic sketch combines musical metaphors for several features common to these majestic waters: waves and currents; sun sparkling on the surface; deep hues of the colder water below; twinkling stars above.
Longfellow’s famous poem, The Song of Hiawatha, though it is about Lake Superior, in the first two stanzas vividly verbalizes some of these images:
“By the shining Big-Sea-Water”
“Bright above him shone the heavens, Level spread the lake before him”
“Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine”
“Motionless beneath the water.”
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A Peaceful Place
Digital sound sculpture 2019 duration: 5:16
The title, from the poem “The Murder of Lidice” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, is an expression of the feeling evoked by the verdant valley below the Lidice Memorial. Though horrible tragedy struck this place on 10 June 1942, now the sloping lawn and babbling creek are a safe haven to peaceful spirits.
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Carte du Ciel
2019 digitally synthesized sound sculpture duration: 8 minutes
Carte du Ciel was an ambitious second phase of an international star-mapping project initiated in 1887 by Paris Observatory director Amédée Mouchez. A new photographic process revolutionizing the gathering of telescope images inspired the first phase, the Astrographic Catalogue of a dense, whole-sky array of star positions. Carte du Ciel, never completed after 70 years, used the Catalogue as a reference system for a complex survey of the vast field of even fainter images.
In the music, ghostly wisps of sound are punctuated by brighter bursts, clustered in a natural, not-quite randomly dispersed texture.
Thomas Clark - composer / digital artist 